[sdiy] Panel Fabricating

[David G. Dixon]

David,

This has been a burning question for me of late as well.  Being pretty new
to this whole synth-diy scene, I'm building a Sound Lab Mini Synth Plus.  I
wanted to do it up like a mini-modular.  I really like the format that
Thomas White uses, and many of his FPD designs are available on his website.
Hence, I did an FPD design in that format.  It's 5U tall by 7U wide (i.e.,
about 8.75" x 12.25") and very nicely laid out in a pseudo-MOTM format.

Now, the bad news.  It would cost about $280 to have it fabricated by FPE.
I figure the entire unit is only worth about half that much, so I started
looking around.

One option is laser engraving -- there is a place in town which will do the
engraving for about $75, but I have to provide the material pre-drilled.
Also, I'm not sure how much extra work it will be to convert the layout to
whatever program they will require.

Another option is to have the design printed on adhesive plastic (lexan) or
aluminum panels.  The electronics tech in our EE department at UBC turned me
on to this local company (website: www.ampcomfg.com) who produced these
pretty nice custom panels on adhesive-backed aluminum of about 2U x 5U for a
student project at a cost of about $6 apiece.  I talked to Ampco, and they
said that the first one would cost about $300, but if I wanted more than 10
the cost would come down to about $20.  It's basically Gerber printing, and
the setup is fairly labor-intensive (so they say).  They can't just run off
a .pdf file, apparently.  (If they could, I could have had it done that
day!)

Hence, I'm still trying to figure out a cost-effective way to make
reasonably nice prototype panels.  I'll be interested in hearing other
peoples' views.

Dave

David G. Dixon
Professor
Department of Materials Engineering
University of British Columbia
309-6350 Stores Road
Vancouver, B.C.  V6T 1Z4
Canada
 
Tel 1-604-822-3679
Fax 1-604-822-3619
 
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-----Original Message-----
From: synth-diy-bounces at dropmix.xs4all.nl
[mailto:synth-diy-bounces at dropmix.xs4all.nl] On Behalf Of David Ingebretsen
Sent: Thursday, September 11, 2008 3:24 PM
To: synth-diy at dropmix.xs4all.nl
Subject: [sdiy] Panel Fabricating

Hello all,

Been lurking on the list for a few weeks now and appreciate all the
information and help you all provide (Thanks Bernie for the "everything"
package. Wow.)

I would like to ask advice about fabricating front panels. I have been
playing with the free "Front Panel Designer" and it's good, but even simple
panels start to cost quite a bit. Adding scales around knobs is not too easy
either. HPGL import is nice but  then you have to use something else (eg:
TurboCad) but I've had trouble there, too getting certain objects to
actually export as vector graphics.

So, I bought FrontDesigner by Abacom. Great design package, easy to do
scales and lots of other fancy stuff, but few of these objects are vector
objects and so will no export as an HPGL file so it doesn't help with Front
Panel Designer.

Other options:
                LaserTrans transfer paper?
                Silk Screen?
                Something else?

What do you use? Do the transfer papers really work? How do you get white
lines printed on it or even can you? Is there some other way to get a
"finished" look to a panel short of taking it to a silkscreen shop or
getting it engraved?

Thanks.

David M. Ingebretsen M.S., M.E.
Collision Forensics & Engineering, Inc.
2469 East Fort Union Blvd. STE 114
Salt Lake City, UT 84121

801 733-5458 Office
801 842-5451 Cell

dingebre at CFandE.com
dingebre at 3dphysics.net


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